Edward Adrift

home. I don’t even care about the left turns. I’m that disappointed.
    I leave the tools in the car and trudge into the house. I don’t feel very good. I don’t know what to do with my time. If my life right now were an
Adam-12
episode, it would be called “Log 152: An Involuntarily Separated Employee Can’t Help Anyone.”

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2011
    From the logbook of Edward Stanton:
    Time I woke up today: I’m not sure what to put. After the debacle (I love the word “debacle,” although I hate actual debacles) at the Herald-Gleaner, I didn’t fall asleep again until after 1:00 a.m., and I woke up to pee at 2:14, 3:31, 4:16, and 5:27. I finally woke up for good at 10:22, when the phone rang.
    High temperature for Thursday, December 8, 2011, Day 342: 26
    Low temperature for Thursday, December 8, 2011: 13
    Precipitation for Thursday, December 8, 2011: 0.06 inches
    Precipitation for 2011: 19.40 inches
    At first, the ringing phone folds itself into the haze of my dream, a sandy vision in my head that slips away from me the moment I realize that I am awake.
    I push myself off the bed and run to the extension in the kitchen wearing my underwear and just one sock, on my left foot.
    “Hello?”
    “Edward, thank God.”
    A funny thing happens when I hear the voice of Donna Middleton (now Donna Hays, since she got married), my best friend. It’s as if my brain fast-forwards through the time that I’veknown her. I remember when she moved across the street from me: September 12, 2008. I remember when I met her for the first time: October 15, 2008. I remember that she didn’t like me, and because of that, I didn’t like her very much, either. But that didn’t last. She and her son, Kyle, became my very good friends. We had good times together. I even built Kyle a super-awesome three-wheeler called the Blue Blaster. And then Donna met Victor Hays and married him, and he became my friend, too, but later he took them away from here.
    “Donna, why are you calling me?”
    I realize immediately that I have said the wrong thing. The phone call surprised me.
    “Please forgive me, Donna,” I say. “I had a bad night.”
    Her words come at me fast.
    “Edward, I promise you, I’m going to double back and ask you about your bad night, because I’m really sorry to hear about that. But can I tell you something first?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s about Kyle.” Her voice is urgent.
    “Kyle?”
    Any vestiges (I love the word “vestiges”) of sleep clear my head immediately. My heart beats faster, and I wish at once that I were six hundred miles away in Boise right now with Donna and Kyle and not here in my stupid kitchen in stupid Billings.
    “He’s been expelled. It happened just this morning. Holy crap, Edward, I was on my way to the grocery store, and I got a call from his principal, and he says Kyle can’t come back to school the rest of the semester at least. My kid! My beautiful, smart kid. I…I just…how do you even…”
    There are a million—not literally a million, but a lot of—things I want to ask Donna, including whether her grocery storehas self-checkout stands, but instead I say, “Slow down.” In my head, I hear Dr. Buckley’s voice and the things she said to me many times.
Slow down. Take it in small pieces. Tell me what happened. Tell me what’s wrong.
My memory of Dr. Buckley whispers the words in my ear, and I say them out loud on the telephone.
    “Tell me what happened.”
    “Edward, it’s all so incredible, I just don’t even know how to begin. I mean, you know it hasn’t been an easy transition for Kyle here.”
    “I know.”
    “He had a lot of friends there, and seventh grade is a really tough time to change schools, because all of these other kids, they’ve been together for years, and Kyle’s had to figure out how to find a place with them. It’s been hard. His grades have been slipping all year, and at first, you know, we figured maybe it’s just the adjustment and a different set of teachers here. We were confident he’d catch up, but he hasn’t. If anything, it’s gotten worse.”
    “OK.”
    I rub my bare right foot on the kitchen floor, and it feels something hard and raised against the linoleum. I look down and see the marinara stain. I resolve to scrub it up today. I’ve waited long enough.
    Donna keeps going. “On his last report card, he had a D in algebra. A
D
! Math is his favorite subject. His marks for conduct were bad, too, and we knew then that we